HOLY FACE OF JESUS

Domenico Fetti, “The Veil of Veronica”, c. 1620

The Holy Face of Jesus Calls Us

Holy Week Reminds Us of Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus

When we think of the Passion of our Lord or make the Stations of the Cross, one image that should come into our mind’s eye is the Sixth Station — St. Veronica wiping the face of Jesus to comfort him. Because Jesus left an image of his face on her veil, surely Veronica — and who knows how many others with her — would venerate that image of his Holy Face countless times over the years.
Her act was like the gospel’s tiny mustard seed that grew into a tree. While it was always there in some way over the centuries, the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus did not come into mature size and full leaf until the mid-19th century.
St. Therese of Lisieux had an intense devotion to the Holy Face. Her monastery had a copy of the relic of Veronica’s Veil at the Vatican (more later), and she would exclaim, “Oh, how much good that Holy Face has done me in my life!”
Most people forget that her complete religious name was St. Therese of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face.
Her sister Céline had something essential to say about Therese’s devotion. She wrote, "Devotion to the Holy Face was, for Therese, the crown and complement of her love for the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord. The Blessed Face was the mirror wherein she beheld the Heart and Soul of her Well-Beloved. Just as the picture of a loved one serves to bring the whole person before us, so in the Holy Face of Christ Therese beheld the entire Humanity of Jesus. We can say unequivocally that this devotion was the burning inspiration of the Saint's life...Her devotion to the Holy Face transcended, or more accurately, embraced, all the other attractions of her spiritual life."
By the way, Céline’s own full religious name was Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face.
“Until my coming to Carmel,” explained Therese, “I had never fathomed the depths of the treasures hidden in the Holy Face.”
One of the nuns testifying during her canonization process said that “however tender was her devotion to the Child Jesus, it cannot compare to that which Sister Therese felt for the Holy Face."
Therese even composed a prayer to the Holy Face and a Canticle to the Holy Face, and she made a Mass chasuble carrying an image of the Holy Face.

Miraculous Blooming
“Those who contemplate the wounds on my Face here on earth shall contemplate It radiant in heaven.” So Jesus told Sr. Mary of St. Peter in 1844. She was a nun in the Carmelite of Tours, France.
“This begins the modern revelations about devotion to the Holy Face,” explains Father Stanley Smolenski, director of the Shrine of Our Lady of South Carolina/Mother of Joyful Hope in Kingstree, South Carolina.
The nun began receiving visions of Jesus and our Blessed Mother from 1844 to 1847. She also reported a vision where she saw St. Veronica wipe spit and mud from Jesus’ face with her veil, plus the contemporary sacrilegious and blasphemous acts adding to the spit and mud St. Veronica wiped away on that road to Calvary.
Jesus made a major request for reparation for the sin of blasphemy, outrages against the Holy Name of Jesus and the profanation of Sundays. The nun revealed that the Lord told her, “You cannot comprehend the malice of this sin. Were my Justice not restrained by my Mercy, it would instantly crush the guilty.”
He said these blasphemies were like a “poisoned arrow” constantly wounding his heart, but he gave her the remedy to make reparation and heal the wounds — the “Golden Arrow” prayer.  He himself gave her the prayer and said, “This Golden Arrow will wound My Heart delightfully, and heal the wounds inflicted by blasphemy.”
Our Lord revealed many things to the good nun, such as “Through this Holy Face you will obtain the conversion of many sinners. Nothing that you ask in virtue of the Holy Face will be refused you. Oh, if you only knew how pleasing is the sight of My Face to My Father!"
Jesus attached several promises to this prayer. Now was the time for spreading this prayer and devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

Beyond Monastery Walls
Her superior told a holy gentleman in Tours about it — Venerable Leo Dupont.
In 1849, on the Epiphany, as usual the Vatican exposed the relic of “Veronica’s Veil” for public veneration. This time, on the exposition’s third day, the face of Jesus that had become hardly discernable, appeared to be alive and bathed in a soft light. The Veil also became colorful. All this happened as many witnesses looked on. Bells rang to call people to see the face of Jesus.
“The expression on the Holy Face was one of profound sorrow and of love,” reports one source. Some copies of the image were made and touched to the relic of Veronica’s Veil. The prioress of the Tours Carmel gave Dupont two images on Palm Sunday. He kept one, and on Wednesday enthroned it in his room burning before it a votive lamp. Later during Holy Week he piously used the oil in the lamp to pray for two people with physical difficulties. Both were healed. That began countless healings and graces of all kinds over the next 25 years as he promoted the devotion to the Holy Face.
He turned his room into the Oratory of the Holy Face which it still remains, and Dupont began the “Archconfraternity of the Holy Face.” Is it any wonder that St. Therese’s father, St. Louis Martin, not only went to the Oratory in Tours but also enrolled his entire family in the archconfraternity?
The Archbishop of Tours approved. Blessed Pius IX said, “This salutary reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus is a divine work, destined to save modern society.” In 1885 Pope Leo XIII also endorsed the devotion and established an Archconfraternity of the Holy Face for the world.

Nutshell History
The Holy Face of Jesus devotion has its roots from the birth of the Lord. His Mother Mary was the first to contemplate his face, and then St. Joseph also. Later the shepherds too. Imagine on how their devotion continued as Jesus grew. And who can begin to realize the depth of Our Lady’s pain as she watched the face of Jesus during his Passion and crucifixion.
“We see that devotion to the Holy Face of God in the Old Testament prepared for its realization in the Holy Face of Jesus in the New Testament,” explains Father Smolenski. He refers many prominent Scriptural references. A sample among them are: Psalm 119:135 asks, “Make thy face shine upon your servant, and teach me thy statutes.” Psalm 67:1 begins, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.”
Matthew, Mark and Luke emphasize Jesus’ face at the Transfiguration — “his face shone like the sun.”  And Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:6, that God brings to light “the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Christ.”
Fast forward to icons looking much like Veronica’s Veil — remember, the name Veronica comes from “Vera Icon,” meaning true image. There’s a tradition from earliest Christianity that tells the story of an image of the Holy Face of Christ “not made by human hands.” Father Smolenski explains it’s claimed to have been made when Jesus pressed the cloth to his face to give to King Abgar IV of Edessa for his cure. The Eastern Church preserves this tradition. Hence, the icons by that name.
Leaping over what saints said about a devotion to the Holy Face over the centuries takes us to the Shroud of Turin on which the image of Jesus came to be seen in a major way once photography came on the scene. Again, interest in Jesus’ Holy Face began to spread.
St. Therese’s sister Céline, an accomplished artist, painted a Holy Face using the Shroud of Turin.

Second Nun Sees Jesus
“Each time my Face is contemplated, I will pour my love into hearts and through my Holy Face the salvation of many souls will be obtained.” So Jesus revealed to a Daughter of the Immaculate Conception nun in Italy in 1926 regarding the Holy Face. Her name: Blessed Maria Pierina De Michelis. She was familiar with the Shroud.
“I wish that my Face, which reflects the intimate sorrow of my soul, and the suffering and love of my Heart, be better honored. He who contemplates me consoles me,” Jesus told her.
During Holy Week Jesus told Sr. Maria Pierina, “Each time my Face is contemplated I will pour my love into hearts and through my Holy Face the salvation of many souls will be obtained.”
On the first Tuesday of 1937, Jesus assured her this devotion would not interfere with others honoring him. “Perhaps some souls fear that the devotion to my Holy Face may diminish that to my Sacred Heart. Tell them that, on the contrary, it will complete and increase it. Contemplating my Face, souls will share my sorrows and will feel the need for love and reparation. Is this not the true devotion to my Heart?”
                The Blessed Mother showed Blessed Maria a scapular medal of the Holy Face, approving it. And Jesus told her he wanted his Holy Face honored in a special way on Tuesdays and a feast preceded by a novena “in which the faithful make reparation with me, joining together and sharing in my sorrow,” celebrated on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.
Venerable Pius XII approved this feast and a Mass for it in 1958.

Even More
Christ has given us many reminders to honor his Holy Face, a major one coming to light near the end of the 20^th century. Although known for centuries, it wasn’t until recent years that the knowledge of the Veil of Manoppello has become widespread, thanks in large measure to the magnificent book by Paul Badde.
“The Sorrowful Face on the Turin Shroud and the Living Face of Manoppello have produced the Holy Face in the context of the Paschal Mystery,” says Father Smolenski.
In 2006 on his first trip outside Rome, Pope Benedict XVI became the first pontiff in over 400 years to venerate the Holy Face on the Veil of Manoppello in church in the town of the same name. Many believe this is the Veil of Veronica, the image of the resurrected Christ.
On his visit he said, “Seeking the Face of Jesus must be the longing of all of us Christians; indeed, we are 'the generation' which seeks his Face in our day, the Face of the 'God of Jacob'. If we persevere in our quest for the Face of the Lord, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, he, Jesus, will be our eternal joy, our reward and glory forever.”
Then in 2016, for the first time in 808 years, townspeople came from that shrine to Rome for an ancient custom of a procession using a replica of the Holy Face of Manoppello.
Archbishop Georg Gänswein speaking at it said that “the face of Christ is the first, the most noble and most precious treasure of all Christendom, even more: of all the earth.”

Marian and Eucharistic Dimension
St. John Paul II brought out the Marian dimension in honoring and contemplating the Holy Face, the Face of Christ, and the major priority to do so. In On the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he wrote, “To contemplate the Face of Christ, and to contemplate it with Mary, is the program which I have set before the Church at the dawn of the third millennium…”
St. John Paul II noted another aspect of this devotion in Ecclesia de Eucharistia. “The Eucharistic Face of Jesus makes the historic Holy Face of Jesus present in all its mysteries in sacramental form.”
And recently Pope Francis explained in his letter declaring the Holy Year — The Face of Mercy — that “Jesus is the face of the Father’s mercy…Whoever sees Jesus sees the Father (John 14.9)” The Church knows her primary task, “is to introduce everyone to the great mystery of God’s mercy by contemplating the face of Christ.”
Isn’t Holy Week the perfect time to begin honoring the Holy Face of Jesus?

The Golden Arrow Prayer

May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God be forever praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified in Heaven, on Earth, and under the Earth by all the creatures of God and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen

STEPHEN HAWKING DEFIED THE ODDS

Stephen Hawking experiences the sensation of weightlessness during a flight aboard a modified Boeing 727 aircraft owned by Zero Gravity Corp. in 2007. (Jim Campbell/Aero-News Network)

BLOGS  |  MAR. 15, 2018

Stephen Hawking Spent His Life Defying the Odds

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.”

Ilyas Khan

The thing that I noticed most over the years about the response of people who met Stephen Hawking for the first time was the weight of emotion that suddenly overcame them. This was even more obvious in public venues, when Stephen, who enjoyed being out in the fresh air wherever and whenever possible, was recognized by people who were least expecting the encounter.
When Stephen Hawking entered the room, even the most celebrated of celebrities knew that they were well and truly outranked.
In this age of reality-TV stars, who pout their way to a digital image that they seek only to monetize as widely and as frequently as possible, Stephen Hawking stood out as someone who acted, spoke and wrote with an integrity that surpassed all else. Looking back over the past 50 years, I find it hard to find anyone with greater recognition — and certainly, with the possible exception of St. John Paul II, and more recently Queen Elizabeth II and Muhammad Ali, no one has gotten close to possessing the same global “brand” that was Stephen Hawking.
When he passed away Tuesday evening, Stephen Hawking fulfilled a prophecy made in 1964 when he was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) and given, at most, a couple of years to live. The title of the obituary in the scientific journal Nature summed up the scientist with the phrase “defying the odds,” which is precisely what Professor Hawking managed year after year. And during those times, even amid the most challenging of circumstances, he breached boundary after boundary with his scientific work.
Stephen was the most prominent scientist of the academicians at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. His encounters with Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis are well documented, and, in fact, the video recording of his meeting with Pope Francis is poignant and moving.
There have been some questions about the contradiction inherent in Stephen Hawking’s well-known atheism and his membership of the Pontifical Academy, but as we know, membership of that academy is not restricted to Christians or people of faith.
As the chairman of the Stephen Hawking Foundation, and in my own professional career as the CEO of a quantum computing company, I am asked if I see problems between a reconciliation of faith and science. Apart from citing the very long list of accomplished Christian scientists, starting with Msgr. George Lemaître, the “Father of the Big Bang,” I speak about the approach that Father Hans Urs Von Balthasar took to the issue of reason versus revelation.
My own journey toward Christ is very much intertwined with a slow but inevitable appreciation of what Balthasar describes, very fittingly, as Christ’s “absolute singularity,” and this determinedly Christocentric point of view gives context to all that I do.
Stephen Hawking’s approach to God remained consistent for the larger part of his life. His use of the famous phrase “to know the mind of God,” when describing the motivation for his scientific research into the fundamental “theory of everything” (where he has tried to unite relativity with quantum mechanics) was metaphorical at best. However, there were times when the mystery of human life, particularly when encountered through music (Hawking was a great fan of Wagner, for example) would provide him with a reason to pause and reflect.
I don’t know if those times led to anything more profound from a conventional Christian point of view, but I do know that Hawking will long be remembered for his contribution to the list of great human achievements that Balthasar described as “relative singularities”:

“For a moment the contemporary world is taken aback; then people begin to absorb the work and to speak in the newly minted language (hence such terms as the ‘age of Goethe’ or ‘age of Shakespeare’) with a taken-for-granted ease, as though they had invented it themselves. The unique word, however, makes itself comprehensible through its own self; and the greater a work of art, the more extensive the cultural sphere it dominates will be.”

It remains to be seen if our successors will come to see the latter part of the 20th century as the “Age of Hawking,” but what is clear to me is that relative singularities all depend upon powers greater than and external to ourselves, and apart from the irony in the fact that the work that Stephen Hawking will best be known for is the scientific singularities that we know as black holes, as Christians we know that God ranges across all time and all space.
As inaugural and current chairman of the Stephen Hawking Foundation, I got to know Stephen on a personal level. It is a privilege that is not easily described, and in the very short time since he passed away from this life, I have found it almost impossible to answer the question, “What was Stephen like?” It is, of course, an entirely fair question, and I think that the quote that his family released yesterday is probably as good of a short answer to the question as we will ever get:

“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” his children Lucy, Robert and Tim said in a statement. “His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humor inspired people across the world. He once said, ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever.”

His family’s reference to Stephen’s point about love fills me still with the belief that Professor Hawking perhaps saw the same external force that transcends us all and makes of even the greatest of us merely “relative” singularities.
My personal favorite of all Stephen Hawking quotes is perhaps the best way to conclude this short tribute to a very great scientist and human being:

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

Ilyas Khan, a Catholic convert from Islam, is the chairman of the Stephen Hawking Foundation.

HOW LONG IS JESUS PRESENT

How long is Jesus present in the Eucharist after receiving 

"We have to pay proper respect to Our Lord"

The great treasure of the Catholic Church is the Eucharist — Jesus himself hidden under the appearances of bread and wine. We believe, as the Catechism states, that “In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained'” (CCC 1374).

Additionally, this Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist does not end immediately when we receive him at Communion time. The Catechism goes on to explain how, “The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist” (CCC 1377).

What does that mean when we receive him into our mouths? How long does Jesus’ Real Presence remain in our bodies?

There is a famous story from the life of Saint Philip Neri that helps answer that question. One day while he was celebrating Mass, a man received Holy Communion and left the church early. The man appeared to have no regard for the Presence within him and so Philip Neri decided to use this opportunity as a teaching moment. He sent two altar boys with lighted candles to follow the man outside of the church. After a while walking through the streets of Rome, the man turned around to see the altar boys still following him. Confused, the man returned to the church and asked Philip Neri why he sent the altar boys. Saint Philip Neri responded by saying, “We have to pay proper respect to Our Lord, Whom you are carrying away with you. Since you neglect to adore Him, I sent two acolytes to take your place.” The man was stunned by the response and resolved to be more aware of God’s presence in the future.

It is generally assumed that the Eucharistic species of bread remains for about 15 minutes after reception. This is based on simple biology and reflects the Catechism’s statement that the presence of Christ “endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist.”

This is why many saints have recommended offering 15 minutes of prayer after receiving the Eucharist as a thanksgiving to God. This allows the soul to savor the presence of God and have a true “heart-to-heart” with Jesus.

In our face paced world it is often difficult to remain long after Mass, but that doesn’t mean we can’t at least pray a brief prayer of thanksgiving. The main point is that we need to remember Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist stays with us for several minutes and presents us with a special time when we can commune with our Lord and feel his love within us.

If one day you forget, don’t be surprised if your parish priest sends altar servers to follow you to your car when you leave Mass early!

JESUS, OUR SAVIOUR

New CDF Document Affirms: Only Jesus Can Save Us

EDITORIAL: The Church 'proclaims Jesus as the only Savior of the whole human person and of all humanity,' reads Placuit Deo, a letter released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

The Editors

As the Church celebrates Christ’s Kingship on Palm Sunday and prepares for his saving passion, crucifixion and resurrection, a new Vatican document reveals how two heresies seemingly from the Church’s ancient past are challenging the ability of the faithful to understand and especially to proclaim Jesus Christ as both King and Savior. Terms like “neo-Pelagianism” and “neo-Gnosticism” will probably at first go straight over the head of the average Catholic — let alone the average person — but the new manifestations of two old heresies have very real consequences for us today and are creating powerful headwinds to evangelization in contemporary culture.
The Church “proclaims Jesus as the only Savior of the whole human person and of all humanity,” reads Placuit Deo, a letter released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) Feb. 22. (See story here.)
But instead of stirring hope and a deeper religious engagement, this message of salvation through Christ is often met today with skepticism and resistance.
Naysayers contend that human beings can save themselves and should not rely on God, let alone deeply flawed religious institutions. They don’t need the Church or the sacraments, they say; they can go it alone, or they have secured a private backchannel to God, and that suffices. As the all-too-common refrain goes, “I’m spiritual but not religious.”
Catholic parents, catechists and pastors are painfully familiar with this kind of pushback. Indeed, Dominican Father Thomas Joseph White, the author of The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism and the director of the Thomistic Institute, which organizes lectures at secular college campuses, told the Register that he routinely fields similar questions from students.
One front of resistance, he said, is “secular liberalism, which seeks to benefit the human race primarily through political transformation without any reference to religion. The reality, however, is that God’s grace and mercy play an integral role in our healing and in our moral progress.”
Another recurring problem is the common belief “that our relation to God … occurs only spiritually through an individual’s hidden religious consciousness or their private relationship with God,” said Father White. “Paradoxically this isolates people religiously and tends to make their relationship with God less real and less profound.”
A professor of theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., Father White agrees with Placuit Deo’s trenchant critique of social trends that are hindering the work of evangelization. As the CDF’s letter explains, Pope Francis has spoken often about two current “tendencies” that resemble the ancient heresies of Pelagianism and Gnosticism, and the CDF wants the world’s bishops — to whom the letter is addressed specifically — to understand the dimensions of the problem.

The CDF readily acknowledges the immense differences between today’s “secularized society and the social context of early Christianity, in which these two heresies were born,” but both Gnosticism and Pelagianism represent perennial dangers.
“On one hand,” the CDF writes, “individualism centered on the autonomous subject tends to see the human person as a being whose sole fulfilment depends only on his or her own strength. … On the other hand, a merely interior vision of salvation is becoming common, a vision which, marked by a strong personal conviction or feeling of being united to God, does not take into account the need to accept, heal and renew our relationships with others and with the created world.”
Both heresies were battled centuries ago by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, most notably St. Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century. The Pelagian heresy rejected the doctrine of original sin and argued that man could attain salvation without the need of grace.
In its modern form, Placuit Deo writes, neo-Pelagianism sees the individual as “radically autonomous” and transforms Christ into “a model that inspires generous actions with his words and his gestures, rather than as He who transforms the human condition by incorporating us into a new existence, reconciling us with the Father and dwelling among us in the Spirit.”
One of the earliest of the heresies, Gnosticism discounted the central role of the body in the economy of salvation. Gnostics believed that the soul could be saved through an intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. Jesus was viewed as a heavenly messenger, and the salvific power of his bodily suffering, death and resurrection held no importance.
According to the CDF, modern Gnostics embrace a model of salvation that is merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism.
If, as the CDF warns, “the only thing that mattered were liberating the inner reality of the human person from the limits of the body and the material,” many of the modern threats to the human person become inevitable, from abortion to the ideologies of transgenderism and transhumanism.
The new versions of the heresies, however, also have clear implications for a proper understanding of salvation.
“Both neo-Pelagian individualism and the neo-Gnostic disregard of the body deface the confession of faith in Christ, the one, universal Savior,” explains Placuit Deo.
“How would Christ be able to mediate the Covenant of the entire human family, if human persons were isolated individuals, who fulfill themselves by their own efforts, as proposed by neo-Pelagianism?”
The Father sent his only Son into the world to redeem our bodies, not to enslave them. Christ wept at the death of Lazarus and sweated blood in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Holy Week is a time for all of us to examine ourselves and ask the difficult question: Am I a neo-Pelagian or neo-Gnostic? Or do I truly embrace the healing power of the Incarnation and the cross and hear properly the Palm Sunday epistle from Paul to the Philippians that says Christ “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross”?
“Christ’s kingship is proclaimed on Palm Sunday, but it also inaugurates his suffering and death. Christ is King at the cross,” said Father White.
“In the Crucifixion, we are saved through the bodily suffering and death of Christ. The material body of the Lord is essential to our salvation. But this also means that our bodies can be saved, even in the midst of human suffering,” he concluded.
“The kingship of Christ on Palm Sunday and the Crucifixion teach us that only through a dependence on the grace of Christ can we find a path to salvation. The human race cannot save itself. Only God can save us.”